It’s been 12 days since 12th of February that 35 employees of Sairme Mineral Waters LTD are on strike. The company did not even pay them their salary for January, and the strikers are offered to negotiate only if the trade union representative Giorgi Diasamidze does not participate.
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Sairme Mineral Waters’ employees demand 30% salary increase, the creation of decent and safe working conditions and the proper operation of the factory.
According to strikers, their salary is 44 GEL for an eight-hour working day, which is about 1000 GEL per month. There are frequent cases when the factory stops and they are not allowed to work. According to them, there is no heating and hot water in the factory and there is unsanitary condition too.
Strikers are planning to hold a mass demonstration at the entrance of the factory on Sunday, February 26, at 14:00.
Giorgi Diasamidze, the head of Labor, union of agriculture, trade and industry, speaks about the pressure on the strikers. As he told Georgian News, Sairme Mineral Waters did not pay January salary to the ones who went on strike.
“Their goal is to deceive employees and influence them, they had this kind of attempt last year too. They call and ask four people to go to Tbilisi and sit at the negotiations table. The strikers do not allow the negotiations to continue without me. First, they are members of trade unions. Before the strike, I was contacted and we went through the mediation process together. We will continue to fight and protest until our fair demands are not met,” says Diasamidze.
The strike is going on for 24 hours, in snow and frost. At the entrance of the factory there is a group on duty at night, and during the day all the strikers gather.
According to the deputy director of Sairme Mineral Waters, Levan Kasradze, “the interest of the strikers, and even the organizer, Giorgi Diasamidze, is not to get any real results. During the mediation, the company tried its best to meet all the demands, within the financial capabilities of the enterprise, however, the demands increased so much that the mediation process came to a dead end. We will continue our efforts to engage in constructive and result-oriented dialogue with the strikers.
Negotiations and any dialogue from our side will, of course, continue with them, however, without Giorgi Diasamidze, this will be our only condition for continuing negotiations.
We have already increased wages by 50 percent in 2022, at the same time the wage increase was much higher than the rate of inflation. For the first time in the last 7 years, the company ended last year 2022 with a loss.”
The company claims that only some of the employees are on strike and the factory continues the production process.
CEO of Sairme Mineral Waters LTD is Russian citizen Yanina Mashkova. 92% of the company’s shares are owned by Iakov Gvichia, born in 1998 and holding dual citizenship for Georgia and Russian Federation. The remaining 8% is also owned by Russian citizens Gia Gvichia and his wife, Khatuna Gvichia. Gia Gvichia is also a supervisory board member of Sairme Mineral Waters. He is a businessperson in St. Petersburg. He is the president of Vyborg-Terminal operating in the Leningrad Region and the owner of 51% of the company's share.
